When it comes to developing a new lithium-ion battery, Colorado State University’s Amy Prieto has the juice. What she needs is the cash.

The 36-year-old assistant chemistry professor has developed a nanotechnology approach to making a battery that may be 1,000 times more powerful and last 10 times longer than existing batteries.

The challenge — aside from conquering a series of chemistry problems — is getting the battery from the laboratory to the marketplace. That requires cash.

“There is a lot of investor interest in batteries,” said Eric Wesoff, a venture- capital analyst with the marketing and research firm Greentech Media. “But there are as many technologies as California wines, and it isn’t clear which, if any, will succeed.”

Amprius, a battery startup based on work by Stanford University professor Yi Cui, has raised $24 million, and Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Sakti3 has received $9.3 million from a range of sources, including General Motors.

Prieto Battery was the first startup spun out of CSU’s “Clean Energy Supercluster,” a program aimed at speeding research to the marketplace.

The company received $1 million from Bohemian Asset Management in Fort Collins and an undisclosed sum from the CSU Fund. The startup also has a $1 million bridge loan and plans to go out for $5 million in venture-capital financing this year, Prieto said.

“The companies with a clean story upfront — one about engineering — have been more successful in raising money,” she said. “Our approach required a lot of new chemistry, a lot of innovation.”

With those issues mastered, Prieto said, her company is prepared to offer a battery that is more powerful, safer and nontoxic. The company is initially focusing on portable batteries for items such as electric bicycles and power tools.

A battery has three elements: the cathode, the anode and an electrolyte to separate them.

Prieto’s technique uses an electrochemical process to “grow” copper nanowires — 1,000 of which together are the diameter of a human hair — that make up the anode. The chemistry is controlled by nontoxic citric acid.

The large number of the tiny wires in the battery increases the surface area of the anode, boosting the power.

Another challenge was the electrolyte, which prevents the battery from shorting. In current lithium-ion batteries, this fluid contains toxic chemicals.

Prieto’s team developed a technique that places a nontoxic electrolyte coating on the anode so there is no fluid in the battery. The team also modified the cathode so it can be made with less expensive materials.

As an undergraduate at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., Prieto became a Bell Laboratories fellow. It was there, where the transistor and the silicon solar cell were invented, that she learned the lesson that has guided her work. “Pick a home run,” she said, “and work backward.”

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